


Ask anything?/where've you been.

by wordsandwickedthings



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Anxiety, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Light Angst, Mother-Son Relationship, cardan is just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsandwickedthings/pseuds/wordsandwickedthings
Summary: for the first time in years, Cardan dreams of his mother.and he hates her, he hates her, he hates her. But no matter what he becomes, he will always be a little boy who wants to be loved.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Ask anything?/where've you been.

**Author's Note:**

> it takes place between book one and beginning of book two, so I tried to flow with canon as much as possible but it might have taken its own turn. 
> 
> enjoy :)

Cardan couldn’t remember the last time he dreamt.

Maybe it had to do with the fact he didn’t sleep unless he was drunk, or the fact he had plenty of people out there who would love to see him dead and those people had access to assassins. 

But tonight, everything that had been weighing on Cardan’s shoulders came crashing down, exhaustion and frustration giving way into a deep sleep. And during that sleep, he dreamt of the tower of forgetting. 

He was standing in front of a cell, his back pressed against the cold stone wall with his arm crossed over his chest in what he looked like boredom. 

Someone had given her a pipe, that was the first thing that registered when Cardan looked up to see his mother behind the bars. She smoked it lazily, letting the vapor poor from her lips slowly as she stared back at him. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw her, really saw her, the last time he had a mother – if he could even call her that. Cardan didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to think about how this wasn’t actually his mother – how he didn’t know what she even looked like anymore. The only thing he had was a hazy memory of a monstrous women with horns, and her back turned to him. 

This is why he doesn’t dream. 

“what are you doing here, darling?” Asha looked up, head tilted to fain confusion, “or should I say high king?” 

She was curled in the corner of the cage, her knees pressed against her chest and her horns scraping the rock she rested her head against. She looked tired, her eyes sunken and her cheeks hallow.

He locked his jaw, trying his hardest to keep his gaze on her. “I am that, a king.” He felt like a child. 

“only because Jude placed you there like a chess piece.” She mimicked knocking another piece over on a chessboard. 

She was smiling, Cardan can’t muster up a memory of her ever smiling. It dug at his skin wrong.

Did he look like that when he smiled?

“Don’t talk about her.” 

She laughed, the sound as cruel and as vicious as Cardan’s own laugh was. 

He hated that thought – the notion that he was anything like this woman before him was nauseating. 

“you’ve met your match, cruel boy,” Asha said, blowing a smoke ring at him.

He rolled his shoulders, resting his head against the concrete. “and you’ve met your end, clearly.” 

His mother stood, rolling her shoulders as she puffed off the pipe. “are you not worried? She is so much smarter than you after all.” 

In his dreams, he is what he wants, and in his dreams, he’s a liar. “I’m not worried about Jude.” 

“what are you worried about then?” 

He opened his mouth, but nothing came. Cardan didn’t remember the last time he thought about what ailed him. 

He was so, so tired of thinking. 

“ask Cardan,” Asha said, “you are so very bad at hiding what’s on your mind.” 

He looked around at the bleak prison, “I should have known he’d lock you away in here.”

“deflection isn’t nearly as clever as you think it is.”

“It doesn’t feel good, does its mother? To be forgotten.” He took in a breath. 

“Like I forgot you?” 

He didn’t want to deal with this right now, there were enough monstrous things running through his brain that he could push this off for the foreseeable future. 

He willed himself to wake, but the shock of reality never came. 

“did you ever think about it?” he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to grasp at what he wanted to say, “What you were doing. Did you ever think about what it would shape me to be?”

“you were never supposed to be anything.” 

“and yet I have a crown,” he laughed out. 

“I knew you, Cardan. I knew you would be nothing more than a drunken prince obsessed with what he could never have.” She moved to the front of the cell, wrapping her hands around the metal bars, “that gold on your head doesn’t change anything, my dear.” 

She wasn’t real. He willed himself to remember she was a figment in a dream that was trying to torment him. Her words don’t fucking matter.

“If I am nothing, what does that make you?” he hated himself for playing this game. “a former king’s whore locked in a cage. Doomed to waste away.” 

Asha didn’t look swayed, smirking at his outburst, “you’re looking at a future, my dear. You’ll be here with me soon enough.”

He rolled his eyes, “And what, pray tell, makes you think that?” 

“Jude will lock you in here, once she realizes she can never really control you.” 

“she wouldn’t do that.” 

“really? She wouldn’t,” Asha said, “why not? She doesn’t care for you; she’s made that abundantly clear. What reason would she have to keep you beyond your necessity?” 

“that’s enough,” Cardan bit out. 

“and why would she care for you? All you’ve been is cruel and malicious to her - because you don’t know how to be kind.” She laughed when Cardan made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “You truly are your mother’s son.” 

“I said STOP!” 

Asha pressed her head against the bars, speaking in a way that, if Cardan didn’t know any better, could be pity, “you can’t do this, Cardan, you know you can’t. she’ll throw you aside like she did the others. She’ll toss you aside as everyone else has done to you.” She chuckled, looking up at her son, “And what if she loses? Your brother would love to see you fail, to see you rot in here with me.” She laughed, “it would be a lovely reunion wouldn’t it?”

“stop, just-” he forced himself to breathe, gasping in air, “I didn’t ask for any of this.” 

“You wanted to live. if you would have just done as you were told and died.” 

The king gapped at his mother; he didn’t even try to hide the hurt that washed over him. 

She studied his face for a moment and then said, “its heart-shattering isn’t it; that even after all this time, you still want me to love you.” 

“I – I.” he breathed in, “I don’t care about you, I knew what you were from the start too.”

“oh, you broken boy, so desperate for someone, anyone to love him.” Asha spoke softly, “I’m just a thought, Cardan. A figure of someone you hate because it’s easier to fight me than to fight yourself. Nothing more, nothing less. We have danced this dance before, you and I.” 

“I want to stop dancing.” 

She nodded, standing straight, “then you have to face reality; as much as you hate me, and Jude, and your brother and father and everyone – you’ll never hate any of us more than you hate yourself. Until you learn to bury that and stand tall, you’ll never be a king.” She shrugged, going back to her spot in the corner, “you’ll always be her puppet.” 

Cardan wakes with a start, unable to catch his breath as he registers his room around him. He tries to breathe again, grasping at his throat like someone is choking him.   
“Are you alright?” he flinches when he hears her voice. Jude is at the desk in his corner, reading over some official documents. Why she was here was beyond him, but he didn’t have the strength to care. 

He opened his mouth, fulling intending to reply; but because he wasn’t dreaming, and because he couldn’t lie, he just said, “I never liked to dream.”

**Author's Note:**

> fallow me on things! that'd be cool.   
> tumblr: ravenclawsarepunkrock/wordsandwickedthings  
> twitter: @Just_adrie  
> instagram: just.adrie


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